Letters Home
by Neftzer
Summary: Prison gets interesting as ex-communicated Slayer Faith meets with some unexpected visitors bearing gifts.
1. Red-Letter Day

Letters Home: _I Wrote Them In My Dreams_  


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She chewed a little on the end of the pencil where the eraser should have been. That pencil, the only sharp implement of any kind they allowed her to have. And even that for only the shortest time, supervised--so that she didn't decided to jam it into the hands, or other soft-tissue body parts of one of her incarcerated "sisters."   
That pencil, though a thin, octagonal No.2, was enough like a stake to feel at home in her grip. Or maybe she was just getting used to the yellow legal pad in front of her, and the hour twice a week she was allowed, as a reward for good behavior, to write letters.   
Letters, plural, except she only re-wrote a version of the same letter over and over each session, the lines echoing each other from week to week like church bells she remembered as a child in Boston.   
The letters were like her days, carbon copies of the same temptations, the same food, thesame people--from inmates to guards to the characters on Big Crazy Lucy's TV stories. She wondered if the guard who was assigned to read her letters for clues to escape plans, alleged mis-treatment—whatever it was they looked for and censored before allowing inmate mail out of the facility--was the same, letter to letter, and if so if they stopped to wonder that inmate 2684 held so tenaciously to cataloging her monotone life for her mother.   
That was who she wrote to, again and again, never expecting a reply. She had no address to send to, so she scrawled on the envelope, _Stacie Peters, General Delivery, Boston,_ and began each letter, "Dear Ma" and signed off, "your little girl, Faith."   
She would think, every once in awhile, about writing to Angel. She could have asked him what the address of his new place was one of the times when he came to visit. It was not so much the embarrassment of having to ask and letting him know that she had no one else to write to, no one else in the world that wished to hear from her. She could handle that. It was only that if she had began her letter, "Dear Angel" she couldn't be sure—didn't trust herself with--what she'd say, what she'd cop to beyond the salutation. And though her pride was perhaps somewhat necessarily diminished by both incarceration and her own actions leading up to her jail sentence, she was still proud. And just as she found the guts not to ask at each of his visits when he thought he might come back, she found the strength of will to avoid putting into her high school mixture of printing and longhand the many interior things that she would have liked to have told him—told someone--who cared.   
_Whatever_, she tossed back her head defiantly at the thought. She was only here to get out of her cell, that's all the dead letter office-bound essays were, nothing more. An exercise in penmanship, at being a regular, letter-writing person. Same as the time she had worked toward to be allowed to take GED classes while she was here on the inside. It wasn't like she cared about school—or normal life, regular people. She was the Slayer and normal life stopped there.   
But that was the old Faith talking, fronting. She _had been_ the Slayer, past tense. Sometimes she did not know what she had turned herself into now. There weren't many vampires to slay here in the Bighouse. But still, she had been the—_a_--Chosen One, and her old destiny still had a siren song quality to it, now matter that it might be no more than a dream deferred at the moment.   
She turned to look over at Big Crazy Lucy across the table from her.   
"The Slayer," she said under her breath, to see if she could get a reaction, any reaction. But the 350-pound Black woman, who ruled the cell block like an angry, unpredictable mama didn't look up from where she was writing yet another letter to her lawyer on the eternal, unending process of appeal.   
"You, there, two-six-eight-four!" one of the new guards shouted.   
_Must've seen my mouth move_, Faith thought, anticipating a reprimand, blanking her face of the sour expression being caught gave her so she could face her punishment.   
"Somebody here to see you."   
Faith stood up, then hesitated. She was not expecting anyone and though she couldn't see the sky in the windowless room where they were allowed to write, she knew it was day and whoever the visitor was it would not be Angel.   
Thinking 2684's hesitance was brought on by fear of losing her letter writing period for the week, the guard encouraged her roughly with a, "you can finish up after they're done with ya--with the afternoon group."   
_Good_, Faith's interior sarcasm snarked, _because I'd hate to miss the chance to write to my non-existent mother. She gets so worried when she doesn't hear from me._   
Faith was taken down a hall to a room—not the long, two-way phone-equipped area where she met Angel through glass when he came by on visiting day, but a smaller room, equipped with a table and a two-way mirror. This was where inmates met with their lawyers sometimes, and where once, when she was first brought in, Kate, the detective, had spoken with her.   
She was brought into the room, handcuffed to a chair which was bolted to the floor. Directly in front of her was a long table and beyond that a mirror. The kind of mirror that anyone who had ever seen a cop show knows is two-way, with a not-so-secret little room behind it where people could watch or listen. The light was on in this room, though, and the glass, instead of reflecting, stood transparent as a picture window. No one was in the room revealed. She turned her head to see the surveillance camera she remembered from her earlier encounter with Kate. The connections were visible in the wall's concrete but the camera was missing, like it had been unplugged and then removed, deliberately.   
Her visitors had gone to a lot of trouble to illustrate their trust of her—or perhaps it was not _she_ whom they wished to remain undocumented, unobserved, the encounter unknown, but rather _them_. She could barely remember the last time she had not sat, ate, slept, showered and crapped without being monitored.   
Whoever wanted to see her, this was certainly turning out to be a red-letter day.   
  
_...to be continued..._   


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DISCLAIMER: Characters and concept of Faith, Buffy, Angel, et al, are not mine.   
More Neftzer fiction at The OutBack Fiction Shack at http://www.royaltoby.com/shack 


	2. A brief treatise in throwaway aside form...

  
She didn't know how long she had been sitting in the chair alone. It had not been long enough for her to feel forgotten.   
Out of habit she tested the handcuffs once or twice. Flimsy restraints at best, against her, the Slayer. At least she had been the Slayer. _Faith, the Slayer,_ like an M.D.--no, better than an M.D.--after your name. She wondered if it--the calling, the "Chosen Nature of Slayer-being-ness"--had an expiration date, or a list of actions that could cause the no-option offer to be revoked. Anyway, she had never received them. And when Called she had signed no contract, agreed to no conditions. It had just-happened, like waking up from a dreaming sleep you had _thought_ was real. Like being jacked _into_ the Matrix instead of being disconnected from it. Judo and helicopter lessons and the Electric Slide all downloaded into you, ready--impatiently, almost--to be used. She tugged on the handcuffs again, playfully, like they were a toy and she didn't want to spoil a good game of cops and robbers--or something more adult--by breaking free too early.   
The heavy door scraped open into the room and she saw first a guard was posted outside. That guard entered with a brown paper tied-up package the size of a couple of stacked shirt boxes, and left it on the table in front of her without a word.   
In quick but unhurried succession a large man and large-enough woman came in and stood against the far wall, flanking the two-way mirror without a word or any recognition of greeting, and from their stance and posture Faith could tell they were the kind of people used to not being looked in the eye, to not being seen. The muscle.   
_Interesting._   
Then a smaller, less-impressive man entered. His age was nearer young than old, and he wore a grey suit and monochrome necktie like it was the most comfortable thing outside of his own naked skin.   
She distrusted him immediately.   
"Good afternoon," he said, a New Englander's accent on his tongue so fulsome that, had she not seen it for herself, she would have thought he held an un-shelled egg in the back of his mouth to achieve the effect.   
She waited for more, which never came, so she attempted to prompt further comment by agreeing, "Yeah."   
She flinched as her own Boston vowels (not always as noticeable as uncertainty could make them) betrayed her.   
"I'm here to offer you a deal, two-six-eight-four." He used her number designation and stopped a moment as though silence was required to relish the offer. "Your freedom from this place--from the entire penal system, in fact."   
She ignored the baited line, her anticipated question of a response she could see practically scripted in this man's head, asking instead, "What's in the package?"   
He did not stutter or stall at her change of focus. "Your clothes--or rather, I should say, some new clothes for you to wear out, off the grounds."   
Faith looked from the man-thug to the woman-thug (looking to her for all the world like they were cousins to the faceless evil sidekicks like TV Batman's nemeses used to always have), and then back to the speaker.   
"Well, that's awfully nice of you," she answered without guile, playing into their hand and into what she imagined they expected from her. "And what if I want my old clothes back?" She feigned slight distress and a hint of trouble yet to come.   
"Done," he promised, smiling confidently.   
She began to work up to hating him for ruining her perfectly status-quo, mind-numbingly similar-to-every-one-that-had-come-before-day.   
"Where's Roy?" she asked, and was rewarded with a small twitch at the corner of the man's eye.   
"Roy?" he echoed, hollow and under-informed.   
"Roy, my court-appointed counsel? Call me crazy, and maybe I've been listening in too much when some of the other girls get to talking about legal matters, but if you're offering me a deal shouldn't Roy be here? Offer to help ease my re-introduction to society with an invitation from a half-way house or something?"   
"Hmmm," he grunted, as though considering it.   
"You got a paper for me to sign? What's the drill?"   
"No. No papers here, Faith. Is it alright if I call you Faith?"   
"Call me Sweetheart if it makes you happy, Dapper Dan, but quit acting like I'm supposed to have some clue about what's going on here. 'Kay?"   
"The Council," he began, and she knew--she should have smelled it coming off of them when they entered the room, suspected it when the surveillance camera was playing hookey from its post on the wall. The Man didn't offer you a deal once you were inside. What did He have to gain? And whatever the system _did_ do to you or for you Roy was always in on it, his homely, overweight face shiny as always with perspiration--a byproduct of his one good suit--a wool blend. Roy, preceded everywhere he went by his belly and an ever-growing stack of files, dropping loose leaf paper like bread crumbs. _Good old, Roy,_ she thought, not even hearing this Watcher flunky intone about how the Council had this, and had that, and had decided that she was just wasting away here in prison, and why not let them spring her from her sentence early so she could come back to work for them?   
"…back where you belong," he was finishing, as most Watchers she imagined would--with little or none of the emotional delivery such a speech could have benefited from in the persuasive department.   
She waited a moment, letting her thoughts course through things she was better off not saying out loud to these yahoos. Things about how the last time she'd spent any serious time in Watcher-town she was running from some guys much scarier than a lynch mob, and them with something much more violent and protracted than a tidy, find-a-good-tree-make-it-quick hanging penciled into their Daytimers. Dapper Dan here had seen her file--or had at least been allowed to see enough of it to be sent out as the Council's emissary. No need to run the "Faith" retrospective of Super 8 clips culled from the vault.   
"Yadda, yadda, blah, blah--who I gotta kill?" she asked, intending to deliver it lightly, offhand--but the pitch of her voice turned dark on the l's of kill, and her smile tasted wrong on her lips. But she held his gaze. What would the Council's deal-breaker be?   
"You're the Slayer, Faith, isn't that enough?"   
  
_...to be continued..._   
  


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DISCLAIMERS: No money being made, etc, all glory to Joss & Co. for Buffy, Faith, and Angel.   
More Neftzer fiction here and at The OutBack Fiction Shack at http://www.royaltoby.com/shack   
Thanks in advance for any feedback. 


	3. 2684 was a Chosen One

  
_I was the Slayer,_ she thought. _I was._ No denying that.   
"A Slayer belongs with the Council, belongs _to_ the Council, Faith--we're offering you your freedom."   
She knew the Council didn't believe in things like freedom, personal or otherwise, but again it seemed a moot issue to push at this moment.   
He saw from her face that she had yet to be swayed to their cause. "We need you, Faith."   
"Why not catch the bus to Sunnydale, Dan? Buffy's practically record-free--a lot fewer favors you have to call in to get an audience with her. And in her plus column? She always was better at being a team player."   
The room fell quiet, though their voices had never been raised. A moment passed, and Faith could almost feel the sun setting outside the windowless room.   
"What would you give to be _The_ Slayer, Faith? The one, alone, to fight against the darkness? What's that worth to you? The opportunity to fulfill your destiny, to see your birthright and purpose come to fruition?"   
"Go on," she said, less from what she imagined he thought was the heady suggestion of power than from a desire to know where he was headed with this new caveat in his offer. To hear Beau Brummell, here, tell it, the Council had decided to throw old Faith, old #2, batting second for the team, the biggest Christmas party of her life. But she knew, _she knew_. The Watchers weren't a charitable organization, and when they diverted apocalypse, or saved the world, it was for their arcane purposes alone, not some Afterschool Special-provoked charity or care for their fellowmen--or women.   
"Ms. Summers has to die."   
There it was, after all that gloss and preamble. The words as naked and bare and unvarnished as if they had been scratched on the wall of the hole the inmates called solitary.   
For a moment Faith wondered how long Council meetings took; with the flowery, hopped-up prose Watchers tended to spout, dressing up everything they had to say--like throwing flowers over a dead body to mask the unpleasantness--they must last for days, weeks even. Or perhaps they were always bare-bones, telegraphic like this with each other, and the "spoonful of sugar" approach to dialogue was reserved for non-Council member communication.   
"Way I heard it she already did." Faith remembered Angel telling her a _Cliff's Notes_ version of the events, including Buffy's resurrection. "Or didn't that time make the grade?"   
"Ms. Summer's still-disputed as heroic death aside, her demise is not the issue here, Faith. Her re-animation _is_." He leaned in. "To be succinct, Buffy Summers is no longer--well," she could see he was trying to dumb down whatever he had to say for her. "Of _this_ world."   
She didn't like people thinking she wasn't smart enough.   
"And as something no longer _of_ this world, we feel, quite strongly as an organization, that she should no longer be _IN_ this world."   
"And so you thought, what the hey, we need one killed and the other one's a greedy killer. Hmmm. Hey, kids—let's put on a show in Andy's barn—we've already cast all the parts!" Mid-way through she realized she'd have to spin her response with less sarcasm, so she followed that up with a near-earnest, "so my freedom, some new clothes, and a chance to go back to work if I off your undead bitch Slayer?"   
He smiled, indulgently as you would at a child acting too precociously and surveyed the room they were in, acting as though he was taking it all in, then he reached toward her and took the corner of her prison blue collar between his thumb and first finger, rubbing the rough material. "What can this place possibly offer someone with your talents?"   
"An awful lotta ass to kick," she said, and she knew he knew it to be true. "And the opportunity to take my own sweet time doing it." She thought of Big Crazy Lucy and added, to front, "six more months? I'll own this place."   
"_See_ what you want, Faith," he echoed her own long-tempting mantra back to her. "_Take_ what you want."   
"So long as one of the things I take is her life?" She thought she could allow herself a little indignance without endangering her bargaining position.   
"You've never had any great love for Buffy Summers, Faith, and even if you had? It's no longer her. We're not asking you to do anything the Slayer shouldn't do." He nudged the packaged clothing toward her across the table like a car salesman offering a pen to sign off on the deal.   
"You understand," she said, "the Council and me? Haven't always gotten along."   
He tilted his head, listening.   
  
_...to be continued..._   
  


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DISCLAIMERS: No money being made, etc, all glory to Joss & Co. for Buffy, Faith, and Angel.   
More Neftzer fiction here and at The OutBack Fiction Shack at http://www.royaltoby.com/shack   
Wondering if I should move this to be posted under the Angel fiction, and I haven't heard from anyone that they're reading it--anybody out there? Thanks in advance for any answers, even if they're to tell me I'm writing crap. 


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